Overstock defeats two patent trolls

Overstock.com is a website that sells all sorts of items for the home and other categories. It’s rather like Amazon, but on a smaller scale. The last time we talked about the company was when it started taking payments for items in bitcoin in January of this year. Overstock is back in the news now after defeating a pair of patent trolls.

Technology firms and websites are fighting patent trolls that are out to get money in the form of licensing fees all around the world. Overstock.com was fighting a pair of patent trolls here in the US. Those two cases were against Execware LLC and Eclipse IP LLC.

Overstock isn't saying what patents were at the heart of the litigation. The company says that this week both of those firms notified it that they were dropping the legal cases. In both instances, Overstock paid out no money. The company even said that both of the patent trolls wanted Overstock to keep the fact that they dropped the cases and walked away with nothing quiet, but Overstock wanted other trolls to know no money was paid.

Overstock has long had a policy of spending its legal funds defending against patent troll cases rather than paying out settlements. These aren't the first patent cases that Overstock has beaten. In 2011, it defeated a patent case from Alcatel-Lucent when Alcatel tried to extract licensing fees having to do with patents relating to telephone tech. One of the Alcatel patents in that case was ruled invalid. The invalidated patent was also upheld on appeal.